in the proposition: background and foreground thread, lumpley wrote: If I say "my guy punches through the drywall," what has to happen among the real people playing before we all agree that yes, my guy punches through the drywall?

It might be rolling dice. It might be comparing strength values. It might be an argument about whether my guy "really could" punch through drywall. It might be nothing but nods - of course he does. It might be we all turn to the GM for a yea or nay. I might have to bribe the GM with Yoo-Hoo or sexual favors! It might take a lot of effort and attention, it might be invisible. Whatever it is, that's our game's System at that moment.

No, the systems was all the players (GM included) assenting to many, if not all of the game master's decisions about framing events, resolution of in game events, etc. Meanwhile, the game master was assenting to requirements by the players of a particular setting, characters, and situation (presumably situation, if the agents did what agents do).

The way you've phrased your language, it sounds as though the game master is the sum total of all system. This is not the case in your example. The game master does make many significant decisions about what happens in the SIS, but every other player does something, too. He or she assents (or does not assent, perhaps). This is part of the system, too. The game master is not the system; all the people agreeing to play in this manner is the system. This is exactly what the Lumpley Principle says.

So, I ask earnestly, what is it you find revelatory in this example? Was this simply freeform roleplaying with a referee?

Matt Snyder wrote: The way you've phrased your language, it sounds as though the game master is the sum total of all system.

Matt Snyder wrote: So, I ask earnestly, what is it you find revelatory in this example?

Seems to me that no matter how absolute, pure or whatever any "tool of the system" may be (whether is a die or a human being), the people agreeing how they'll use those tools is what matters. That what system is, people agreeing how they'll use any and all tools to make shit happen in play (I'm using "system" here just as Lumpley Principle does).

Also, I don't see how people seeing the GM as a tool of the system is anything more than a slight obfuscation of the fact that the guy could do something they don't like at any time (deprotagonization, Force, etc.). It doesn't make that argument less viable, it makes the argument less obvious, I think.

Also, how could anyone fear deprotagonization coming from a set of dice or a pencil? That's impossible. It's blaming the messenger. I mean, who wouldn't want to walk out on a GM who uses the following as an excuse for a rotten actual play situation:

"Hey, don't blame me, the dice did it."

That's stupid. He forgot to add "All I did was enforce what the dice said." So, yeah, we can blame him, because he held up a stupid, dysfunctional situation that his players hated and no one had fun doing.

Again, there are NO tools of system in gaming that are not subject to the human beings playing the game. All players must assent before anything happens in the game. This is the Lumpley Principles main point, I believe.

I think your interest in a game in which the game master feels more like a neutral object ignores that the people using that object (i.e. the GM) are still susceptible themselves to all that selfish, subjective, invasive, bullying behavior most folks want to avoid.

This observation doesn't strike me as much more than, "Gee, when a GM acts a certain way, people notice him less, even though our game is just as susceptible as it ever was to dysfunction." What am I missing?

Force only exists if the Social Contract is violated by the GM's decisions.

The GM is one of the players. System is how those players determine what goes into the SIS. Even if the GM is given all or most of the decision making power, it's how he makes those decisions that is system. He may use any method of DFK, but in your case it sounds like it was mostly Drama.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Matt Snyder wrote: What am I missing?

ErrathofKosh wrote: Force only exists if the Social Contract is violated by the GM's decisions.

Matt Snyder wrote: how could anyone fear deprotagonization coming from a set of dice or a pencil? That's impossible. It's blaming the messenger.

Matt Snyder wrote: So, yeah, we can blame him, because he held up a stupid, dysfunctional situation that his players hated and no one had fun doing.

Matt Snyder wrote: Again, there are NO tools of system in gaming that are not subject to the human beings playing the game. All players must assent before anything happens in the game. This is the Lumpley Principles main point, I believe.

System is iterative and it is closely tied to the social contract.

Social Contract in this regard is very aptly named, because system is an ongoing constantly renegotiated contract.

In every contract there are 2 parts: An Offer and an Acceptance. That's all that is required to have a legally binding contract. On occassion there is a third part: the Counter Offer.

Common in RPG play is the concept of Negative Confirmation. You don't see this often in contract law directly but it is used frequently in many legal applications. Negative Confirmation simply means "failure to respond to the negative will be taken as acceptance of the positive"


Every single event that ever happens at the RPG table is simply part of this process.

When the GM says "3 agents of the KGB accost you as you try to get into your car" he is making an offer.

When the players respond "I try and delay them so the others can get away" they are 1) making an acceptance through Negative Confirmation of the GM's offer and 2) making an offer of their own.

When the GM says "Ok make an Intimidation Check against Difficulty 10" he is 1) making an explicit acceptance of the player's offer and 2) making an offer on how to decide whether the players desired outcome happens.

When the player picks up the required dice and makes the roll saying "Made it by 2 that's a total success" he is again making an Negative Confirmation acceptance of the GM's offer, and again making an offer of his own. In this case his offer, not explicitly spoken, is to follow the precedent of interpreting "total success" completely in his character's favor.

When the GM says "Ok with total success, you manage to...." he is 1) accepting the player's offer of abiding by the total success precedent and 2) making an offer of what that is going to mean in this instance.


Thats it, thats sytem in action.


I think a large part of the somewhat circular reasoning that I've seen in reference to GM roles and the use of force and such is the result of mistaking "negative confirmation" for lack of participation in System.

Just because the players are not openly challenging the GMs decisions does not mean they are not part of the process. They are still accepting the GMs offers 100% as much as if they were openly saying "yeah ok, I'll accept that"

Umm, ok. I guess your whole point is that GMs can be tools. Crude jokes aside, that's fair enough.

It seems a little like journalism, which I happen to know a thing or two about. Journalists pride themselves on objective reporting. Can they really be 100% objective? Nah, but they strive. Same thing for the GM-as-tool. Inevitably, he won't be just a tool. He'll be a human being prone to things humans do. But, he and his fellow players can strive, I guess. Not my cup of tea, but more power to 'em.

EDIT: Note that when you agreed to me above, you were implicitly agreeing to the fact that deprogtagonization doesn't become impossible. If you're right, it means that only the GM can't deprotagonize. It doesn't prevent Asshole Player A from raining on Victim Player B's parade. Which is why this whole thing seems like TO ME a waste of time. It seems like you're interested in striving to prevent dysfunction from the GM, but admitting it might come along anyway from other players.

I'd be more interested in play that avoids the problems all together for everyone (either via another mode like Narrativism where force ain't gonna happen, or via a better social contract).

I must disagree with the whole idea, in general, of the GM being a part of system. The difference that I see, which may only be semantic, is that as long as the GM is making decisions about what goes into the SIS, he is a player using the tool of system. Only when he no longer makes decisions, but facilitates their being made, does he become a tool himself.

Example:
If I tell the GM the intent of my character and he makes the decision on whether my character succeeds or fails, he is using system. How he makes that decision is irrelevant.

However, suppose I want my character to do something and another player has his character oppose mine. To determine who wins we must guess the GM's weight. The one who gets the closest without going over wins. I get out the scale... Now I am using system (however silly it might be) and the GM is just a part of it, a tool.

When the GM has the least control is when he is most likely to be a part of system.

Incidentally, I think this may make for an interesting system, say where the GM writes down a number between 1 and 100 or something similar...

Valamir wrote: In every contract there are 2 parts: An Offer and an Acceptance. That's all that is required to have a legally binding contract.

Yes, that's called the "Consideration" which I left out of the write up because "Consideration" can be pretty much any thing the parties deem have value.

Since actual play can be deemed to have value, pretty much the whole process has as the built in "Consideration" moving play forward.

I'm going to return to Doc's description in a moment; I think I can clarify what's happening there. First, let me step away from it.

When I run OAD&D, I have a stack of rule books on which the game is based; I'm the Dungeon Master. There are two concepts present here: authority and credibility. Authority rests in those books; if anyone wants to know the rules of the game, the books can be referenced as an authoritative statement of those rules. However, credibility rests with me--specifically, I have the credibility to interpret and apply those rules, and in a very real sense (unless there is a serious challenge from the players) those rules mean what I say they mean, and they impact play the way I say they do. If I say that the ground ahead is so steep that it requires a climb walls roll, then it does, because I'm the one who has the credibility to determine how and when the rules apply. That there is such a thing as a climb walls roll, and that it applies to surfaces whose slopes approach vertical, can be derived from the authority of the rules, but the presence of those rules in the book mean nothing until I, the person with the credibility to interpret and apply the rules, say they do.

What seems to be happening in Doc's example is that he himself is the authority (or his system in his own mind is the authority), and he has the credibility to interpret and apply it. Thus in that case he has the function of being an authority (traditionally assigned to rule books) and the function of having the credibility to apply the rules. He doesn't have all the credibility in the game--players are still providing credible statements about character actions--but he does have the credibility to resolve outcomes and to apply rules (and probably also to define situations).

I think the virtue in what Doc describes is his ability to be a good neutral referee; that is, he can be the authority and exercise the credibility fairly without bias. That's distinct from several other types of referees, many of whom can also be quite good--a good oppositional referee has to be able to exercise credibility fairly but with a certain type of bias that makes it possible for him to play against the players while still rendering unbiased judgments on resolutions. A good participationist referee exercises his credibility by taking over all outcomes and bringing the story to its intended conclusion.

So Doc is the authority to whom anyone would have to appeal for a statement of the applicable rule, but he's also the interpreter and applier of the rule, which are distinct roles from being the authority.

--M. J. Young

I think that's pretty right MJ.

Where I disagree with Dr Xeno (which I think is the same point Matt does) is here:

Ah, but can we blame her if she upheld a situation specifically because the players demanded she do so? Specifically because her duty was to function as a tool, like dice? To blame her then is a case of blaming the messenger, and it's no more rational than blaming a set of dice.

Valamir wrote: I see this as a direct parallel to the GM's roll in running an RPG. The document (rule book) can say anything it likes. But the GM is still bound to abide by prudent fiduciary principles (i.e. the social contract). Even if the players demand that the rule book take precendence, the GM is still very much to blame for violations to the social contract.

Valamir wrote: He can't cede that responsibility and say "I was only doing what the rule book said" and be validated any more than the courts would let me get away with cedeing my fiduciary responsibility and say "I was only doing what the document said".

But it sounds like you're assuming a specific kind of player (or set of responsibilities) in a specific kind of situation when you say "GM" and like Doc is being careful to say one kind of GM in one kind of game. What about a game where all players are equally GM (e.g. Universalis)?

Valamir wrote: He can't cede that responsibility and say "I was only doing what the rule book said" and be validated any more than the courts would let me get away with cedeing my fiduciary responsibility and say "I was only doing what the document said".

This is somewhat off-topic, but many people think that this limitation on the right to ultimately contract with you freely is a bogus infringement of a right nodded to by Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution and explicated by the supreme court in quotes like "[the individual citizen's] power to contract is unlimited." Certainly any libertarian would consider the legal situation you describe a fault of the system. Now you may not think so, or maybe you don't care because you're just dealing pragmatically with your profession, but if the system you operate under professionally is flawed (as I think) then why should we try to pin analogies from gaming to it?

Chris

Vladimir: Wonderfully put application of contract/negotiation to the gaming experience in your first posting to this thread! Cool!

Matt Snyder: You're right that no one can be truly objective. What I was trying to emphasize was how changes in labels of game master ("fellow player" or "system utility") results in differences in group perspective, thereby modifying expectation and interaction.

What I expect from and accept from a utilty differs from what I expect from a fellow player. How I interact with a player will be shaped according to whether I see myself as fulfilling the role of a fellow player or fulfilling the role of a utility. How much of my self I dare invest in my interactions differs according to whether the social contract designates my niche as fellow player or as utility. How my players will treat me when I game mastering changes according to whether they perceive me as a fellow player with whom to jostle and tease or as a game system utility to be made use of as they need it.

That difference is the one which particularly fascinates me!

Errath of Kosh: You write "When the GM has the least control is when he is most likely to be a part of system." I would argue the reverse is also true. And when the game master has little control, accusations of force and deprotagonization become recognizably faulty.

(Based on your handle, I keep hearing in my mind's ear your sign off as *ring tinkle chime* [whispery voice] "Cheers" *tinkle chime* -- or has it begun that I have forgotten something? < grin>)

TonyLB: "I know this is nitpicky, but I think it may be usefully nitpicky, since I think the same principle holds importantly in Social Contracts. An explicit social contract that simply claims "The players will assent to GM rulings" is less useful and communicative than "The players will assent to GM rulings in exchange for smooth and uninterrupted play of the game"." Well put!

M. J. Young: You make some excellent points (at least I think you do).

"Authority rests in those books; if anyone wants to know the rules of the game, the books can be referenced as an authoritative statement of those rules. However, credibility rests with me--specifically, I have the credibility to interpret and apply those rules, and in a very real sense (unless there is a serious challenge from the players) those rules mean what I say they mean, and they impact play the way I say they do." -- you present an interesting parallel between game master and Supreme Court justice, with gaming books the equivalent of The Constitution and the body of legal precedents (I don't recall the technical term for that right now).

I have game mastered as per that model as well, although I am referring to a different model.

"I think the virtue in what Doc describes is his ability to be a good neutral referee; that is, he can be the authority and exercise the credibility fairly without bias. That's distinct from several other types of referees, many of whom can also be quite good--a good oppositional referee has to be able to exercise credibility fairly but with a certain type of bias that makes it possible for him to play against the players while still rendering unbiased judgments on resolutions. A good participationist referee exercises his credibility by taking over all outcomes and bringing the story to its intended conclusion." Exactly! You express it far better than did I.

What is 'OAD&D', by the way? Oriental AD&D or Original AD&D or what?

Vladimir: I will have to disagree with the applicability of your statement about "Fiduciary Law requires me to act prudently in the best interest of the client" in that it applies only if the game master can be seen as parallel to fiduciary lawyers. The same basic concern applies to your statement about "You can't enforce a contract to commit a crime. If I offer to pay you $10,000 to kill someone and you accept and perform the job, no court would help you collect that money. I don't consider limitations of that sort to be an infringement."

In some models, your parallel holds, and in those cases, I would agree with you. I would especially agree with you apropos official Hackmaster, in which mistreated players can turn to a ?higher court? to have a hackmaster lose her or his official credentials to run a game if the hackmaster can be proven to have violated the letter of the rulebooks.

I am trying to present a different model, one which varies from the more common ones treating the game master functionary as judge/moderator/conductor by instead treating the game master functionary as a role taken up by someone willing to suspend her or his humanity in obedience to the will of the players.

Even I don't always follow that model -- but my recognition that such a model of the game master functionary even exists fascinates me, and I wonder about its ramifications.

Keep in mind that in many cultures around the world, the United States ideal of self-expression and individuation as a major goal would seem self-indulgently absurd -- they follow the ideals of complete submersion of the individual within her or his ascribed role. So let's not forget that the idea of transforming from person into role, from individual into functionary, from player into game master, is logical and intuitively "proper" to many cultures which have successfully carried on for thousands of years. (And even in the United States, for decades people have argued that one cause of adultery comes from a married man or married woman privileging his or her individuality over his or her role as spouse.)

Doctor Xero

Doc, that's cool. I see now what you're intrigued by in posting this thread. I haven't really come to my own final conclusions about it, but that's ok, too.

(My reservations are pretty subjective. *I* find that situation generally negative in how people treat their fellow GM as "not a player." But, I can see how, say, Gamists would want that tool without interference from the GM's "human factors.")

Doctor Xero wrote: Errath of Kosh: You write "When the GM has the least control is when he is most likely to be a part of system." I would argue the reverse is also true. And when the game master has little control, accusations of force and deprotagonization become recognizably faulty.

Dr. Xero wrote: (Based on your handle, I keep hearing in my mind's ear your sign off as *ring tinkle chime* [whispery voice] "Cheers" *tinkle chime* -- or has it begun that I have forgotten something? < grin>)

AS for use in actual play, I really like the idea of the GM being the black box 'round the system, i.e. you just tell the GM what you have in mind and he resolves it without showing off the metagame structure. Of course, this would have to be almost a stated part of the Social Contract. If I were writing rules for such a game, I would make that one of the first ideas introduced.

Maybe, somewhere in my busy schedule, I'll find time to work on something like that. Great post and ideas Doc.

Cheers,
Jonathan

EDIT: BTW, my manners come from my English side. My bloodthirstyness is all Scottish...

I am trying to present a different model, one which varies from the more common ones treating the game master functionary as judge/moderator/conductor by instead treating the game master functionary as a role taken up by someone willing to suspend her or his humanity in obedience to the will of the players.

Doctor Xero wrote: What is 'OAD&D', by the way? Oriental AD&D or Original AD&D or what?

Valamir wrote: I'm somewhat puzzled by the purpose. It seems to me that the biggest advantage that table top roleplaying has over computer roleplaying (after the social factor) is that there is a human being able to exert human judgement over elements of play to a degree that no machine has yet acheived.

If you systematically strive to purge that human judgement from the GM's role, then what you have left seems little different from what you'd get with a computer GM except that the human is slower, less well organized, and doesn't come with pretty 3d graphics and flashy spell effects.

Valamir wrote: You are Xero with an "r"
I am Valamir with an "a" and no "d"
:-)

Ah, so your name has no Transylvanian antecedents, and you weren't making a pun off my name and Zeno's paradox? Wow! No offense given nor taken on this end nor the other, I hope.

i read the thread and i'm stumped on how applied contractal law gets applied to the relationship between players and gm. now i'm not criticizing because i have never actually played pen and paper rpg in the place to actually comment on what ought to be the relationship between the players and gm. however, i remember something i read on the topic of jurisprudence, there was a doctrine that says the body of laws as we have now are actually internally inconsistent and therefore all sentences made thus far in history are basically judges making their own laws. not that i necessarily believe in it, but it is something to think about... and gm, from what i have read so far, seem to be considered as a judge. and so i want to ask:

this is especially regarding to valamir's point - that systematically eliminating human judgement from the process constitutes an antithesis to having a human gm - is the judge's purpose to descibe the law and make only deductive judgement from that? or is he in the position to prescribe what is ought to be done? the other question is about the players: do they refer to the gm to describe what is going on or prescribe what is ought be going on? and do the players decided what is to happen that is in the realm of physis (nature) rather than just thesis (artifical stuff, espeically confined to their own actions only)? shouldn't the gm be in the place to decide what is to happen that is in the realm of physis (nature), yet only in the descriptive way, or is it fine to mod physis in a presciptive way - as in descibe nature normatively?

my opinion on the matter is that a gm prescibing what the world "ought" to be doesn't make much sense. since the players in that case would not be exploring the world per se but only exploring the gm's fiat and perhaps his taste. if the players were to involve in prescibing what's in physis, it would even make less sense because then they are not exploring but creating a world - basically an excercise of their fiat in a supernatural context (they are prescribing what ought to be in nature after all). on the other hand, the gm do excercise some judgement but i cannot see why it would be done outside of moderating players behaviour or acting in npcs' proxy. also, i am skeptical about human being necessarily worse in moding if the human judgement is taken out - after all, computers needs programmers and programme are as good as their programmers. in order to program in some set rules for a game, someone has to enumerate the rules that would describe all possible "worlds" that can happen in the game. the problem is that much of our experience are ad hoc impressions rather than some epiphanic realization of some consistent physical laws - so the summation of our experience, which is properly induction, does not let us reliably iterate some form of laws that would allow us to describe all possible worlds. with a human gm, i can envisage how sometimes those ad hoc experience would help to facilitate what would be otherwise missed in a generalized law people created prior to the event. however, i couldn't quite grasp how it can rather be benificial if the gm use this to prescibe rather than descibe the physis of the world.

it is in this sense that i guess i also feel that the gm is only part of the "system" in that its duty is to sort out deductively what the rules describe in any given situation - the gm actualizes the general rules into particular instances.

then again, of course, a pnp rpg session could be understood as a creative process for creating a collective fiction. but i'd think that would preclude activities such as "exploration" since, by definition, fiat would not be something one explores - may be the effects of exercising one's fiat, but not fiat itself.

after saying all that, of course, it may be me that is totally off base here.

Welcome to the Forge, Tani. You raise some good questions, and I'm not going to attempt to address them all; but a couple of clarifying points might help.

First, in relation to the role of the "GM", a good part of this thread is based on the fact that there is not a single definition of what the role of a GM is, and that such a definition is not possible because that will vary from game to game. It's a bit like asking what are the win conditions in a card game--obviously, that depends on the card game. Around here we tend to refer to "GM Tasks" or "GM Responsibilities" or even "GM Credibility", and then attempt to distinguish the many and varied things that game masters do in role playing games, so that we can consider which tasks necessarily should be in the hands of some sort of game leader and which ones should be distributed among the other players at the table, to best satisfy the objectives of a particular game. Thus in some games referees are going to be fair judges of outcomes, and in another game they're going to be strategic opponents for the players, because the games have different objectives.

In regard to the use of "exploration", it has taken on a rather complicated meaning here which may take a moment to grasp; but if you'll permit I'll attempt to put it in perspective.

We agree that all play involves the creation of events within a shared imaginary space; that is, everyone at the table is attempting to imagine the same thing happening. In most more traditional play, one of those players, called the GM or something similar, describes all the elements of setting, all the antagonists, all the critical points in the situation; the other players each describe the actions of one character. Note, however, that in describing the actions of their characters, those players are creating within the shared imaginary space. Thus exploration is inescapably creation in role playing.

The question that this raises is simple: what are the limits of creation for the various participants in the game? The answer is not so straightforward, however. It relates to levels and types of credibility. To illustrate this, consider the following exchange:

Referee: The room is a bedroom, apparently of a woman.

Player: I walk over to the dresser and look in the top drawer for a scarf or something similar with which I can bandage my hand. While I'm there I'll look at the knick-knacks on the dresser to see what they might tell me about the owner.


Note that the referee said nothing about a dresser, nor about clothes in the dresser, nor about knick-knacks anywhere in the room. The player took the statement that the room looked like the bedroom of a woman and extrapolated from that, creating the dresser, the scarf, and the presence of knick-knacks, all of which are at least highly likely to be in a woman's bedroom.

In some games, that would be outrageous; the player would have to ask the referee whether there was a dresser, and where it was, and whether there was anything on it, whether the drawers opened, and what was in them. In most games, though, it would be taken in stride that the player was acting within the parameters established by the referee.

In some games, the players would have the credibility to go far beyond that, "exploring" the shared imaginary space by creating anything that was appropriate within it. "I look in the top drawer and find love letters; I'm tempted to read them, but for the moment I pocket them."

I hope that helps.

--M. J. Young

Hi Tani, welcome to the forge.

my opinion on the matter is that a gm prescibing what the world "ought" to be doesn't make much sense. since the players in that case would not be exploring the world per se but only exploring the gm's fiat and perhaps his taste. if the players were to involve in prescibing what's in physis, it would even make less sense because then they are not exploring but creating a world - basically an excercise of their fiat in a supernatural context (they are prescribing what ought to be in nature after all).

At the risk of writing what may appear to be a silly "applause" posting, I make the following comments :

M. J. Young wrote: Around here we tend to refer to "GM Tasks" or "GM Responsibilities" or even "GM Credibility", and then attempt to distinguish the many and varied things that game masters do in role playing games, so that we can consider which tasks necessarily should be in the hands of some sort of game leader and which ones should be distributed among the other players at the table, to best satisfy the objectives of a particular game. Thus in some games referees are going to be fair judges of outcomes, and in another game they're going to be strategic opponents for the players, because the games have different objectives.

M. J. Young wrote:

Referee: The room is a bedroom, apparently of a woman.
Player: I walk over to the dresser and look in the top drawer for a scarf or something similar with which I can bandage my hand. While I'm there I'll look at the knick-knacks on the dresser to see what they might tell me about the owner.


Note that the referee said nothing about a dresser, nor about clothes in the dresser, nor about knick-knacks anywhere in the room. The player took the statement that the room looked like the bedroom of a woman and extrapolated from that, creating the dresser, the scarf, and the presence of knick-knacks, all of which are at least highly likely to be in a woman's bedroom.

In some games, that would be outrageous; the player would have to ask the referee whether there was a dresser, and where it was, and whether there was anything on it, whether the drawers opened, and what was in them. In most games, though, it would be taken in stride that the player was acting within the parameters established by the referee.

In some games, the players would have the credibility to go far beyond that, "exploring" the shared imaginary space by creating anything that was appropriate within it. "I look in the top drawer and find love letters; I'm tempted to read them, but for the moment I pocket them."